Llama drama

W and I cleaned our bedroom a few weeks ago. We organized and dusted and vacuumed and purged ourselves of three garbage bags full of crap.

We had been having problems sleeping and felt that a clean, uncluttered room would help with our insomnia.

In the spirit of refreshing my side of the room, I decided to buy a new lamp for my beside table. I poked around at Target and then started looking on the web for something functional and whimsical.

Through a bizarre series of events, I ended up with a llama lamp.

“What’s a llama totem mean?” W asked.

“I didn’t think to check,” I replied.

From Spirit Animal Totems

Llama is here to remind you that only through hard work and perseverance will your dreams be realized. Know that you have the ability to adapt to any situation you find yourself in. Know that whatever loads you are carrying right now you will be able to manage and see them through. Alternatively Llama could also be reminding you that your biggest focus should be yourself and that personal growth and your connection to spirit should be your highest priority at all times. Insisting on following your heart rather than your ego will bring you all the rewards you are seeking.

These days, I am overscheduled and overworked and overwhelmed.

I have an upcoming speaking engagement. And commitments as president of a local book-related nonprofit.

I have committed to a January deadline for my new book, My Mother Says Drums Are for Boys: More Adventures in Gender.

It feels like there are a million things I need to do. And never enough time.

Plus, Wentworth. We have to finish Wentworth.

I will trust in my little gold llama that with hard work all things are possible. And will remember to take time out for myself when I need it.

* * *

What’s your animal totem these days?

 

 

Finding love

W texted me from work yesterday afternoon.

“Can we have the same thing for dinner that we had last night?”

“Um, I think so,” I text back.

It is not a difficult meal to prepare.  Breaded chicken tenders, noodles with butter and parmesan, and corn.

Me, only butchier.

W is struggling with some things these days, so I do what I can to make things easy for her.  I try to have dinner ready when she comes home.  I try to have the house picked up and food in the fridge.  I buy her cards and write her notes and sneak a piece of chocolate in her lunch.  Cooking chicken tenders two days in a row really isn’t a big deal.

When W comes home, I am in the kitchen finishing up dinner.

“Thank you for finding me,” she says.

She says it all the time.  It’s a reference to how we met on match.com.  I was the one who sent her a note.  I was the one who found her.

“Someone has to take care of you,” I say.

“I know,” she replies.

W tells me how lucky she is to have me in her life.   The women she works with always tell her they need a Middle-age Butch to do all of the things I do.  Someone to pack their lunches, cook their dinners, pick up their prescriptions, do their grocery shopping.

I am not available.  I am a one-woman woman.

I remind W that she does lots of things for me.

She disagrees.

“It just looks different,” I tell her.

W is the breadwinner.  Because she works so hard, I am able to work from home and take care of things like lunches and dinners and errands.

She is my biggest fan.  She loves everything I write.  This writer with low self-esteem needs to have her ego stroked.  Often.  Like a giant, needy cat.  Without W’s encouragement, there would be no finished book.

She loves telling people about my book.  I tell her not to make such a big fuss, but inside I light up like a firework.

She tells me I’m cute.  All the time.  Sometimes I even believe her.  She tells me I’m the world’s best lesbian.  But then we all knew that already.

W is the adventurer.  She drags me along on her excursions.  I plant the heels of my Dr. Marten’s in the mud and make things difficult.  But I am always glad to have ventured out and seen the world through her eyes.

She makes me giggle.  If you tell anyone, I’ll only deny it.  And then poke you with a sharp pokey object.

She is the love and light in our house.  The rest of us are just moths.

The things I do can be calculated in monetary terms.  How much would you pay someone to cook your dinner or do your grocery shopping?

But W’s contributions are priceless.  To help a person believe she is a rock star like Joan Jett or Melissa Etheridge and can achieve her dreams is an invaluable skill and service.

It happens.  Sometimes.  When the stars align.  And you find the right person and fall in love.

A slice of butch life

So, I woke up this morning in a really great mood.  Perky , you could say.  Yes, you heard that right.  This butch was feeling perky this morning.

So much so that as I was skipping to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I tripped on the bottom of my flannel nightgown.  I know.  So said.  Butch down!  Butch down!  I cried because it hurt so much!  After 10-15 minutes of open weeping, I went about my morning grooming routine.

After I was perfectly coifed and dressed (Who’s the fairest of them all?), I made a nice cup of chamomile tea.  Drank it in my souvenir mug from the movie The Notebook.

And then it was off to my home office to do some work.  There was a Phillies spring training update on the local sports channel and some show on how drinking beer can actually boost your sex life and make you more attractive to the ladies, but luckily those shows didn’t interest me so I was able to focus on my work.

I know, I know … all work and no play makes butch a dull boy/girl.  I did take a short work break to watch an infomercial on a new line of skin care from France!

I’m waiting to hear from W about when she’s coming home.  It’s Friday, which means salad night for us!

* * *

Well, happy April 3rd to all of my Flannel Files followers.  Unfortunately, this post is two days too late.  Story of my life, folks.

See if you can spot all of the inconsistencies in the above post.  And remember to never take yourself too seriously.

Cat in the keyboard

This what I do when I don’t feel like working.

I extract my cat’s hair from inside the dark recesses of my computer keyboard.

See, she likes to sleep on my shoulder when I am hard at work at my desk.  Her hair is on the longish side, and strands of it fall onto the keyboard.  I brush them aside, but they still manage to find their way in between the keys.

This is my cat Magic sound asleep on my very messy desk.

Last weekend, I vacuumed the keyboard in an attempt to remove snack cake crumbs, bits of potato chips and any stray cat hairs.  This just made things worse.  Little tufts of hair peeked out from between the keys.  My vacuum apparently didn’t have enough suction to remove half a cat from a keyboard.

I refuse to buy cans of compressed air any longer.  It is just air.  In a can.  For $7.99.  I just took three deep breaths and made $1.59.

Actual picture of hair removed from keyboard.  No cats were harmed in the filming of this hair.

I ended up using a straightened-out paperclip to pull out the hair, running the metal tool under the keys —  QWERTYUIOP — and pulling up.  I called my son over to help.  It became a family project.

We piled the hair into a neat little pile.

“Wait, I want to take a picture of it for my blog,” I said.

He just rolled his eyes.

Here’s something else that I do when I don’t feel like working.

I write about extracting my cat’s hair from inside my computer keyboard.

What about you?  What do you do to put off work?